New proposal for Ubuntu Backporters Team Charter

[Alex Murray]

Hi Ubuntu Backporters Team,

The Tech Board is hoping to progress the ratification of a charter for
the Ubuntu Backporters Team as discussed previously on a number of
occasions. My understanding is that these previous discussions between
the Backporters Team and the Tech Board have not been able to reach a
consensus on both the level of detail and the requirements that would be
stipulated in the Charter.

The previous drafts at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBackports/Charter
seemed to contain a mix of both high level statements/directions for the
team as well as lower-level policies for the operation of the team. I
notice that now most of these lower-level details have moved into
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBackports/Policies but there is still no
higher level Charter outlining the purpose and guiding principles for
the team.

As such I propose the following as a starting point, which is based on
the previous proposal from rbasak[1] but which tries to reduce any
potential burdens placed on the team by such an overall Charter:


 * Establish and manage an effective process to handle backport
   requests based solely on their technical merit.

 * Maintain the backports pocket based on this process, with an aim to
   ensure all requests are responded to in a reasonable amount of time.

 * Maintain quality in the backports pocket, where the definition of
   quality is driven by the team, but decided by consensus within the
   wider Ubuntu developer community.

 * Handle process reform and membership management internally, ensuring
   that any responsibility can be carried by any contributor who
   demonstrates the required capacity and competence.


I hope this can serve as a basis to reach a consensus that is amendable
to both the Backporters Team and Technical Board.

I welcome any feedback from all involved (please note I am not
subscribed to the ubuntu-backports list so please CC me directly on
responses).

Thanks,
Alex


[1]
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-backports/2022-February/022687.html